A singer and entertainer all her life, Margaret was 89 when she died. A member of ‘The Russell Sisters’, she performed a cabaret mime act for many years in the many social clubs around Easter Road, Leith and Abbeyhill, and her sons, Rikki and Raymond, made sure that her last appearance was a hard act to follow! … Continue Reading
Category
To Celebrate A Life
Rites of Passage
Can you imagine attending your own funeral? The old joke is that it’s the best party you’ll never go to, but that may no longer be true.Last year, in his Channel 4 series Grayson Perry helped to create a ‘living funeral’ for Roch, a man who’d been living with Motor Neurone disease, and it was … Continue Reading
Will you have a cup of tea, father?
I was a big fan of Father Ted – and not just because Father Dougal and I share a surname. A bit further down the billing but no less important to the show’s success was Mrs. Doyle, housekeeper of Craggy Island Parochial House, played by the brilliant Pauline McLynn. Her catch phrase invariably comes to my mind when someone offers … Continue Reading
A Greener Way to Go
I was delighted to see this article in today’s Guardian, not least because it prompted me to visit my archives, where I found this piece I wrote about resomation for Humanitie Magazine in 2010. When a body is buried in shallow soil, one of the principal biochemical aspects of natural decomposition is alkaline hydrolysis carried … Continue Reading
Thank you, thank you
I get lots of cards and messages from families and friends after my funerals and it’s hard to know what to do with them. Even though speaking about death is become a more accepted part of contemporary life, it doesn’t feel quite right to share them on social media, or at least I haven’t yet found … Continue Reading
Speaking at Funerals
I saw a story the other day that took me aback a bit. Father Joseph Anthony Toal is the Roman Catholic Bishop of Motherwell and he found himself all over the papers when an instruction he’d sent to his clergy was leaked to a journalist. He even made the Daily Telegraph. He told his priests to refuse requests … Continue Reading
Scottish Government Remembrance Day Ceremony 2018
Should the poppy continue to be the flower of remembrance, or should we allow it, once again, to be the flower of forgetfulness?
The Language of Flowers
The culture war over the poppy’s meaning continues.
11/11 – a Humanist Poem of Remembrance
To the nameless millions who lie in mass graves,
From the forest of Katyn to the killing fields of Cambodia,
From Treblinka to Shatila:
We will remember you.
Joe’s Toes
There are emails you don’t want to get, and this one from Marie and Keith is one of them. On 8th February 2014 you married myself and my husband at Dundas Castle. It was a beautiful ceremony and we were thankful we chose you to conduct it. This is a really difficult email to write … Continue Reading